Sunday, August 19, 2012

Boss Nigger (1975)

Blaxploitation stalwart
Fred Williamson was well on the way to becoming a bad-movie auteur by the time
he wrote, produced, and starred in this brazenly titled Western, so Boss Nigger features his signature
elements of a take-no-guff protagonist and substandard storytelling—in
Williamson’s cinematic world, attitude is everything and quality is a needless
luxury. Presumably conceived as a dramatic riff on the previous year’s comedy
blockbuster Blazing Saddles, this blaxploitation
joint employs the same narrative contrivance as the earlier film—a black man
becomes sheriff of a frontier town, much to the chagrin of the white locals.
However, instead of being installed in the job through political chicanery, as
in Blazing Saddles, Boss (Williamson)
seizes the vacant sheriff’s position in order to hunt down a rival—and also to
tilt the race-relations scales in favor of African-Americans. “Sorry, we can’t
stay for supper,” Boss says in a moment indicative of the film’s obviousness,
“but we got us mo’ whiteys to catch.” Much of the picture comprises uninspired
scenes of Boss and his comic-relief sidekick, Amos (D’Urville Martin), humiliating
white people while they pursue a criminal named Jed Clayton (William Smith), a
standard-issue Western villain who kills for fun and profit. All of this
should be diverting in a trashy sort of way, but the movie is too enervated to enjoy.
Director Jack Arnold, a veteran whose career stretches back to sci-fi classics
including The Creature from the Black
Lagoon (1955), seems utterly disinterested in his work (Can you blame him?), and the generic funk score clashes with Arnold’s old-fashioned
visuals. Plus, Williamson’s script lacks both restraint and taste—during the
climax, for instance, Williamson features Boss getting crucified by the bad
guys.